"How pretty it is, calling the house 'the little grey house'! It is because your name is Grey, isn't it?" asked Hester.
"Both reasons—we're Grey, and the house is all time-and-weather-stained grey, too," Rob answered, shaking her hair out over the dressing-sacque Hester laid over her shoulders. "I haven't anything to put on, except clean collars and cuffs."
"It doesn't matter; we're alone, and black is always full dress and full undress," said Hester. "If I had your hair I shouldn't care about dresses. Are your sisters pretty, too?"
"They are very pretty. Wythie—Oswyth—is older than I, a year, and she's just sweetness—looks, and character, and all. And Prue, the youngest, is a beauty," said Rob, proudly.
"To think of having two sisters!" sighed Hester, laying out Rob's fresh little hemstitched "turnover" collar.
At dinner Rob's shyness returned, but the Baldwins were most kind, and spared her the necessity of more conversation than was required to make her feel thoroughly welcome. The beautifully appointed dining-room, the perfect service, brought before Rob's eyes in a new light the little grey house, the patient cheerfulness of the dear Grey Mardy through all the past years of drudgery and petty economies, the perfect breeding of the mistress of the little house, and the careful training of its daughters, in spite of adverse circumstances. For the first time Rob realized the difference between wealth and poverty, and that there were hundreds of people who had never felt the wheels of life jar. And for the first time, though she had always worshipped her mother, she fully realized what that hidden, unselfish life had accomplished in keeping life in the little grey house on the plane on which she and Wythie and Prue had been taught to live and think. She caught her breath in a wordless prayer that her mission might not be vain, and that, in the midst of grief, her brave mother might be set free of her long struggle.
Mr. Baldwin and his wife left the girls to themselves after dinner, sitting across the room from their elders, and soon Rob was telling Hester, with more detail and far more humor than she had shown her father, all that there was to tell of Fayre, the river, the little grey house, the Rutherfords and Frances, Cousin Peace and Aunt Azraella, Kiku-san, Wythie and Prue, her mother, their queer adventures in economy, her story-telling, Mr. Flinders and Polly, and all the sorrows and joys which she saw, from this distance and in this beautiful home, in a totally new and impersonal light.
Hester went off into such peals of laughter that she grew hysterical, and her father and mother came over to share the fun. Rob did not mind them; she had got so excited over her own narrative, and so interested in it, that she could have told the story to the President.
"Why, it's like the nicest sort of a girls' story, Rob," cried Hester. "How perfectly lovely to live such adventures! And here am I all alone!"
"And here are you seeing plays, studying whatever you like, going to concerts, and doing all kinds of things!" retorted Rob. "It's funny enough to tell, but let me assure you, Miss Hester Baldwin, there are times when the mercury gets pretty low in the little grey house."